SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Driving GT Legends: A Fast Lap at Monza Junior

Thankfully for a hack like myself, the cars of the GTL era were somewhat limited in what could be tuned or tweaked in the chassis and transmission department. Those limited options as reflected in GTL make refining a setup that meets your driving style a less challenging affair than with more modern racing eras. Although I've provided setups for download to compliment this article, if you're new to sim racing you might want to give making your own setup a whirl, just to become comfortable with what the various settings do. When starting from scratch at a new track, I actually use the basic setup tool's slider bars as a starting off point. They let me establish, in basic terms, how I want the car to handle, and after I get something that feels workable, I dive into the detailed setup GUI (show Basic Setup & Advanced Setup GUIs) and finish tweaking the settings to specific values.


Setup Menu	Advanced Setup Menu

When setting up the car's transmission, select a final drive ratio that lets the car top out in high gear as you approach the end of the back straight. It's the longest one, and that final drive ratio will let you maximize your straight line speed. Of course, the key to going fast at Monza Junior is in the corners, and with most of them being low speed affairs, you'll need plenty of mechanical grip, minimal understeer and a suspension that lets you quickly apply and control power-on oversteer so that you can "assist" your steering with a little throttle as you exit the corners.

Enjoy the provided setups, but feel free to try making small adjustments and observe what effects those changes have on the car's handling. When it comes to setups, remember two things: I am not a setup guru by any stretch, and your driving style might require a different setup. Good luck!

Limitations Of Training In GTL

I guess this would be the place where I must start my second "hint" to SimBin about GTL, specifically the game's self-induced limitations as a training tool for new racers. The replay features of GTL are somewhat limited, and when compared to other sim titles' replay features it would seem that SimBin have intentionally limited the functionality of the game's replays in such a way that the effect, intentional or not, is to reduce their training value.

In SimHQ's Sim Racing Tips series the value of replay review and analysis is discussed. Checking and comparing shift points, revs, and turn entry/apex/exit speeds of both your own and other drivers are critical to easing the learning curve at a new track. In GTL, however, the replay modules of SimBin titles offer very limited information in a replay, and lack RPM, speed and gear information in the replay cockpit or GUI. As a result, you'll get much less out of reviewing these replays and I'll have to go into much greater detail in this article about what the car is doing, in order to compensate for this glaring lack of information. And unfortunately for the reader, words won't have the same impact as a fully functional replay. Note to SimBin — make more data available in the replays, such as in GPL, NR2003 or rFactor!

Naming Conventions & Administrivia

As in all of our Fast Lap articles, we choose to label turns by our own standards for ease of the discussion at hand, and add an "R" or "L" to denote a right or left hand turn, respectively. Because of the limitations imposed by SimBin on replay fidelity, we'll spend a bit more time discussing car speeds, revs and shift points than we might do on other titles such as rFactor.

Monza Junior Track Layout

Since GTL tracks are not broken up into timing "sectors" with which to assess driving performance in various zones on the track, I've selected my own visual references for timing checkpoints. This way, I can keep track of how quickly I've negotiated certain segments of the track and determine where I might be gaining or losing time on a given lap. The easiest visual points for me are the pedestrian bridges over the track. I'll refer to them by gear, rpm and time as we go along in our discussion.

There are three turns on the Monza Jr circuit that will define the quickness of your lap times. I'll mark those corners with a as we discuss each one. Just remember that if you're going to work on improving at a corner, start with the ones marked with a first. If you're not quick in these turns, then you won't record fast laps.

OK, time to hit the track!

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